“But if we can’t lift them all out—” Gonsalves began.

“We can’t lift them all out at once aboard the shipping we expect to be available,” Honor said. “So we send out as many as we can in the first flight.”

“First flight?” McKeon repeated very carefully.

“Exactly.” Honor smiled thinly, with no amusement at all. “Assuming that we take the shipping from Shilo intact, we load the transports up and send them off with everyone we can fit aboard, but we hold the warships here.”

McKeon frowned. He could feel where she was headed, and he didn’t like it. Which didn’t mean he saw an alternative he liked better.

“Hold the warships here?” Jesus Ramirez cocked his head at Honor and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“Probably.” This time there was a bit of true humor in Honor’s crooked half-smile. “We don’t know who or what will be coming along after this first lot, but if we can grab off both battlecruisers and all three heavy cruisers, plus whatever else they send along for escort, we’ll have the beginning of a fair little squadron of our own. If we can put even skeleton crews aboard each of them, we’ll have the capability to run down and intercept later arrivals even if they get hinky and refuse to come into the orbital weapons’ envelope. They’ll also give us a mobile combat element that should let us think about some much more flexible defensive plans if the bad guys come calling in force.”

“I like the thought, Honor,” Benson said, “but do you think you might be getting a little overly ambitious? I know how rusty I am, and we’ve only got three more weeks to train in. Where do we get the people to man that many ships?”

“Warner?” Honor turned to Warner Caslet and crooked an eyebrow. “You’re more familiar with Peep crewing requirements than any of us are. What’s the minimum crew that could fight a Warlord effectively?”

“That’s a little hard to say, Ma’am, since I never actually served aboard one of them,” Caslet replied. But he also rubbed his left eyebrow while he thought hard. “You could start by forgetting the Marines,” he said thoughtfully. “Our—I mean the People’s Navy’s—Marines don’t have any real role in ship-to-ship combat, except to back up damage control, so we carry smaller Marine complements than Manty ships. We’d save about three hundred there, which would get us down to around nineteen. Then we could probably cut Engineering about in half and save another two-fifty.”

“Cut Engineering in half?” McKeon sounded doubtful, and Caslet shrugged.

“You’re going to have to take chances somewhere,” he pointed out, “and our engineering departments are heavily overstaffed compared to yours because our people aren’t as good. The worst part would be the loss of warm bodies for damage control—which would only be aggravated by leaving the Marines out, of course.”

“True,” Honor agreed. “On the other hand, I think any fighting we got involved in would have to be fairly short and decisive if it was going to do us any good. Damage control might be fairly immaterial under those circumstances.”